As a composer and arranger, violinist John Metcalfe creates rich, layered music out of incredibly simple elements. You can hear it in the work he's done for Peter Gabriel and The Pretenders, but also in "Wrapped," the first song from an upcoming EP with the same title. Metcalfe weaves basic beats and rippling synthesizer melodies to create an ideal blanket for Rosie Doonan's voice.
"I was so excited to work with Rosie Doonan on this song," Metcalfe told NPR via email. "I first heard her sing when we met working on a Peter Gabriel tour. It was important to find the right vocalist to carry the track; to be intimate in the sparser sections but strong enough to really soar with the other instruments and deliver the emotional impact as the song develops. Everything about the production was designed to maximize all aspects of the track so it was important for the instruments not to just sit in the background but to really push with and against Rosie Doonan's incredible performance and so magnify the closeness and heat of the lyric."
Metcalfe and Doonan further amplify those themes of closeness and heat in their new video for "Wrapped." It opens on a close-up of Doonan sitting in front of a table loaded with votive candles. The video then trades between different shots of Doonan's emotional searching in the light and heat of the candles. She sings to her own reflection in a tiny hand mirror before twirling it absent-mindedly on the table. The intimacy of the shots makes lines like "Her notion of tears is numb like snow, froze in my mouth and lost their flow," hit like punches to the gut.
"Wrapped" is from John Metcalfe's EP Wrapped, due out May 6 on Real World Productions.
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